English | Malaysian

I identify myself as Anglo-Malay. My mum’s English and my dad’s from Malaysia. I was born in the UK and then moved out with my family to Kuala Lumpur when I was 6 months old. My mom stayed there with us until I was 16.

It was a relatively lower middle-class upbringing, nice small houses. Malaysia is very multicultural, so you don’t really notice that you’re different because there’s the Indian neighbour across the road and the Chinese neighbour next door. Then there’s the Malay families all around the place and you don’t really notice that I’ve got a White mum. I didn’t actually notice that my family was different until primary school, I then started to realise that the majority of families were Malay, Chinese or Indian.

I went to a Chinese kindergarten but because I understood that it was a Chinese kindergarten I knew I wouldn’t see people of my mix there. The main reason why they sent me there was to learn English. When I went to primary school I realised I was different, the only other person in my school of mixed-race heritage was my older brother. That was it for a while, until I spotted one other kid a few classes above from us who’s mum was American and dad was Malay. I was happy I’d found another kid who looked like me, but there was a barrier there as they came from a rich family. Slowly my parents gravitated towards other families who had mixed race children, we are all friends now. They are identified as Eurasian by the community.

I lived in a really nice community, so you didn’t feel different as such. But I think there was always a curiosity. It wasn’t until I came to England that I experienced any negativity.

I was told that both my grandparents were really against my parents’ marriage, but by that point they knew that there was nothing they could do. My grandad on my father’s side was more strongly against it and to try and stop them. My parents met through their family’s postings in the British Army. My father and my mother’s father were both in the Army. My parents met at a mutual friend’s house. When the families realised that there was like a romance going on, my ’ll be amazing.

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